


Confiteor

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Boondock Saints (Movies)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-12-19
Updated: 2003-12-19
Packaged: 2018-01-25 08:48:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1642382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Connor has to come to terms with the nature of sin and forbidden desire.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Confiteor

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Yochan

 

 

Confiteor 

I. Cogitatione 

A single day can change everything. No, fuck that, a single moment. Connor knows this now, understands it in a deep elemental way he didn't before. Perhaps this, too, is part of the change. 

That fateful St. Patrick's Day replays in his mind like a bad video, scratchy and grainy around the edges, not smooth like the worn beads sliding between thumb and forefinger. Change had hung, thunderous and flatly metallic, in the air-- crackled into ominous being when Chekov and his goons had walked in to the bar. Connor had known immediately that there would be no peaceful resolution with the Russians, but he'd still felt compelled to try. Peacemaker was his job, after all. The logical one. _Only one with a piss-lick of sense_ , his ma used to say. 

And Murph had done his job, too. Cracked wise right off, stirred things up. Not that they'd needed much stirring. All Murph managed to do was warm up the crowd for Rocco, who at least made up for his lack of wit-- _pinko Commie mother_?-- with abundant balls. He'd gone down hard for his trouble, and Connor felt the little switch in his brain trip, the one that kept Logical Connor running the show. Murph had looked at him for a split second and he'd known what they would do. When they swung it was in unison, ink-marred fists connecting simultaneously on dense Russian flesh. 

The video blurs, jump-skipping off the reels as Connor remembers the flash and chaos of fighting, bright white light of the adrenaline haze. Focus had returned when he looked over and saw Murph backed up against the wall. He'd wanted to run to him, punch that fucking asshole in the kidneys and drop him like a rock, but Murph wouldn't have appreciated that; so instead he'd yelled for everyone to stay away from Murph, because he could take care of himself. Which he did, smashing the only decent bottle of wine Doc had in the place against the goon's skull. 

Good times, oh yeah, especially the next hour. Connor recalls his own laughter at Chekov, tied to the bar, and how delightfully easy it had been to light his ass on fire. Easy, and deeply satisfying. He feels no guilt for it; it was well earned, it was. 

His fingers slip over the next decade and shake a little as he remembers walking home afterwards. A short walk, the air cool and smelling of the damp red bricks in the old alley, and Murph had leaned into him a bit, slung his arm around Connor's shoulders. 

"I reckon that was a bit like casting the snakes out of Ireland," Murph laughed, and his eyes looked black-glittery under the dim street lamp, crackling with pure, sweet life. 

At that moment--precisely _then_ , with Murph's breath exhaling beerwarm next to his face and the scuttle of a rat ducking behind the garbage cans in his ears--Connor had a flash of thought: Murph, pressed up against the brick wall, biting at his shoulder while Connor grinds their cocks together in a desperate push towards home, Connor's mouth against his neck, lapping and speaking incoherent words. It was strangling in its intensity, vision so real it stole his breath. No understanding why this came then, and not at any of the countless million moments of a lifetime shared so far. Against reason he knew what Murph would taste like--saltdirt and truth-- and the sudden realization that that is one thing he had yet to experience about his brother was nearly as odd as realizing how very badly he wanted just that. 

_Push it away, Connor_ , he thought, _ye daft sick fuck._

And, for a little while, he did. 

II. Verbo 

His lips form the words of the Hail Mary as if by rote, slipping over the syllables as his fingers trail further down the string of beads. The church is empty this early in the morning, empty and a bit chill, the edges of his breath dusting out visible and surrounding the altar with a vague penumbra. Even Murph wouldn't hadn't wanted to come so early - which, of course, is precisely why Connor had chosen to sneak off while he was still asleep, before the faintest hint of light had filtered through into gray predawn. It felt like sneaking, yes; Murph would be awake when he returned, and he'd look at Connor questioningly. 

Or perhaps not. Connor thought that Murph might understand, even if he didn't share the compulsion. 

Connor remembers that in the days and weeks that followed St. Patrick's Day, in the terrible and wonderful conflagration of events, the thought would come back to him from time to time. Always at some strangely quiet moment, like watching Murph pop the top on a can of beer, his fingers neat and efficient in their small movements. He would hear Murph's half-stifled whimpers, taste the ghost of his skin on his tongue. Murph would look up, and catch him staring. Like the afternoon after they'd quit the meat packing plant, and had come back to round up a few last things. It hadn't seemed safe anymore in the loft, but it wasn't so easy just to leave it, either. So they'd sat down for one last drink. No beer, but Connor had found a third of a bottle of Bushmill's tucked under some clothes, a thank-you gift from Doc. And it had begun. 

He'd looked again. Remembered. And gotten caught, again. 

"What?" Murph regarded Connor over the lip of the red plastic cup. His face revealed nothing yet, and Connor had the unpleasant sensation that Murph was deliberately holding his cards close to his chest. 

"Nothing." A large swallow of his own whiskey burned a nullifying trail down Connor's throat and he willed his eyes to look away from Murph. Found that impossible to achieve. 

"And here I thought you were appreciatin' my finer charms," Murph said with a grin, and his eyes ran a glittery cold _deja vu_ down Connor's spine. 

"So what if I was?" Just like that, and Connor tried to laugh, to pretend that he hadn't actually said anything of the sort. Some things you just did not say; some words, spoken aloud, would fly into the world with blacklaced wings, never to be recaptured. 

But Murph didn't laugh, just kept regarding Connor with dark, unyielding eyes, until Connor flinched and turned away. 

"Drink yer fuckin' whiskey and let's go," he'd said as he'd pushed up from the table, and he'd heard rather than seen Murph crush the plastic cup in his grip. 

III. Opere 

The creak of a door to his left catches Connor's attention, but it's only Father Riley coming in to ready the church for morning Mass. The first dim brushes of muddy sunlight have crept around the frame of the open door and halo about Father Riley's gently balding head, not bright enough yet to illumine the stained glass windows. Father Riley sees Connor, he surely must, but for all the indication he gives Connor feels like the dust in the corner of the rose window. 

Connor doesn't take it personally, really. He knows he's just part of the landscape, and it's easier for the Father not to take too much notice of him. It keeps things simpler. 

Father Riley vanishes into the vestry, and Connor sets aside his rosary. He has not confessed the weighings on his heart to the priest; he is not sure he can. So he strikes his chest of his own accord, and begins the Act of Contrition. 

_The final slip over a precipice he hadn't even realized he was careening towards came a week after they'd left the loft behind, and it was Murph who shoved him over, without ceremony. He'd fucked up the job, an easy one on paper but a job's never really easy and he should have known, should have guessed that Sal would have had a girl in bed with him, and she'd been so frightened, so terribly afraid, her cries like banshee shrieks bereft of air. He hadn't meant to kill her, of course not, but she'd started to run and he'd reached out to grab her, his fingers clenching at her long black hair, tangling in it, and when he'd pulled back her feet had slipped, slipped in the wet red on the tiles and they'd gone out from under her and she'd gone down hard, cracking her head on the raised brick hearth, and then the banshee was silent._

_He'd looked at Murph in shock and horror, but Murph had only grabbed him by the arm and pulled him out of there. Time to ask forgiveness later. First things first, like getting the fuck away._

_The car was smeared silver and the too-loud blare of the music Murph hadn't turned off from before, an indiscriminate rock thumping that first echoed, then drowned out the explosive pounding of Connor's heart. He couldn't think, didn't want to wrap his head around what he'd just done. Didn't think when Murph opened his car door and pulled him out and into the musty, too-cold air conditioning of the motel room._

_Still didn't think when Murph sat him on the low bed and crouched between his knees, looking up at him with those strange midnight eyes._

_And found thought truly impossible when Murph wrapped his hands around his head and pulled him down into the softest, most electric kiss that had ever been_. 

_He hadn't fought. No, God save him, he hadn't, not one protest or attempt to push Murph away. He'd opened his mouth to the tidal, the seemingly inevitable, and he wasn't sure if the salt he tasted was Murph or the raw blistering of his own tears._

_They didn't speak, decisions made in that simple place where neither of them had to, and Murph had crawled onto the bed and pulled Connor down on top of him, yielding. And Connor had laid into him, kisses going bloody even as cloth tore, but Murph let him. And because they never did anything by half measures, Connor didn't start now._

_Murph's eyes were starless when Connor pushed inside, and then they closed for the harsh rocking together, Murph's fingers digging bruisedeep into Connor's biceps. Opened again when Connor did, and together they sealed the vacuum, infinite._

It shouldn't be this difficult, Connor thinks. He feels deeply that this is wrong-- _mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culp_ a--but on the matter God is strangely silent. He'd spoken to them clearly in the dream, and they had obeyed. Every second of every day since then had revolved, in one way or another, around being His shepherds. Around culling the wicked from the herd. And they had done it, one by one, a great and bloody sacrificial offering. 

But what did this make them, if not wicked? Sure enough and Scripture was clear on the matter. Even as Connor prayed for forgiveness he knew he wouldn't be forgiven, because he wasn't truly sorry. It had felt like stepping back inside a home you'd forgotten you owned. Murph had only spoken of it once, the morning after. He'd sat up from beside Connor, still languishing in the places that were half in the kingdom of sleep, and pulled on a tshirt. Looked at Connor and said "I'm not sorry" before heading off to the bathroom. Connor had no answer to that, merely twisted the cheap white sheets between his fingers and tasted ash and regret. 

The taste is still there, coating Connor's nostrils and the back of his throat like the faint traces of incense that hang eternally in the church. Underneath both, however, he can still detect the bittersweet molecules from his brother's skin, lingering. 

He can't understand why he aches with every thrum of his blood for what is surely his damnation. Surely, if he asks, the desire will be taken from him. "Orare pro me," Connor whispers as he stands up, his knees creaking from the unyielding wood of the kneeling bench. 

The only answer is the sound of his footsteps echoing on the fieldstone pavers as he leaves the church, heading back towards the room where Murph will be waking up. 

Starless. 

 


End file.
